November 2017

360 Developer Landscape

A cross-technology view of developer demographics and involvement

In this report we aim to give a complete picture of the modern developer by showing how they spread themselves across different technology areas. It turns out that the single area specialist is a rare species, with most developers having broader interests, and even professional involvement. This has major implications for anyone hoping to attract developer attention.

The technology landscape is increasingly broad, creating an environment where both companies and individual developers have to prioritise the areas to invest their limited time and resources. We have moved from an environment where software was either native desktop or web, to mobile and cloud becoming the dominant paradigms fairly rapidly. Even so, native desktop and web are still dominant in the enterprise and cannot be ignored for consumers. On top of this, developers now need an eye on emerging platforms in the Internet of Things, plus Augmented and Virtual Reality. To add to the challenge, advances in Machine Learning mean that this is also a technology frontier that many can’t afford to ignore.

In this report we aim to give a complete picture of the modern developer by showing how they spread themselves across different technology areas. It turns out that the single area specialist is a rare species, with most developers having broader interests, and even professional involvement. This has major implications for anyone hoping to attract developer attention.

The technology landscape is increasingly broad, creating an environment where both companies and individual developers have to prioritise the areas to invest their limited time and resources. We have moved from an environment where software was either native desktop or web, to mobile and cloud becoming the dominant paradigms fairly rapidly. Even so, native desktop and web are still dominant in the enterprise and cannot be ignored for consumers. On top of this, developers now need an eye on emerging platforms in the Internet of Things, plus Augmented and Virtual Reality. To add to the challenge, advances in Machine Learning mean that this is also a technology frontier that many can’t afford to ignore.

In this report we aim to give a complete picture of the modern developer by showing how they spread themselves across different technology areas. It turns out that the single area specialist is a rare species, with most developers having broader interests, and even professional involvement. This has major implications for anyone hoping to attract developer attention.

The data in this report comes from the 12th wave of our Developer Economics survey, which reached over 21,200 developers in more than 160 countries.

The 360 developer landscape report comes with a single user license. If you are interested in an enterprise-wide license please contact us.

How does developer involvement in different areas vary with experience?

What is the relationship between developers’ age and gender and their involvement with different technologies?

What is the educational background of developers across different technologies?

How does education relate to compensation?

How does developer's involvement in different areas impact their compensation?

What are the most popular combinations of technology areas for developers to work in?

To get a full list of this report’s contents and a sample graph, please download the brochure.

Developer Economics 12th edition reached an impressive 21,200+ respondents from 162 countries around the world. As such, the Developer Economics series continues to be the most global independent research on mobile, desktop, IoT, cloud, AR/VR and machine learning developers and data scientists combined ever conducted. The report is based on a large-scale online developer survey designed, produced and carried out by VisionMobile over a period of six weeks between November and December 2016.